Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s consumer devices division, wants to be the world leader in smartphones in 3 to 4 years

Most of the slow down in global smartphone sales is attributed to the contracting and highly competitive Chinese smartphone market which remains the world’s largest smartphone market.

What’s really interesting here is rounding off the top five global smartphone makers are three Chinese brands with no or little presence in the U.S.: Huawei (8.5%), followed by Oppo (4.6%) and Xiaomi (4.4%). “Huawei grew 64% annually to ship an impressive 28.3 million smartphones worldwide in the quarter. Huawei is closing the gap on Apple, but Huawei itself is now being chased hard by ambitious rivals like Oppo and Vivo”.

Huawei has been the leading smartphone maker in China for the last two consecutive quarters, surpassing Apple and once fast-growing smartphone players like Lenovo , ZTE and Xiaomi. “We want to become the world’s number one premium smartphone brand,” said Changzhu Lee, Huawei’s vice president of the smartphone product line. “We are already number one in China, just 5 years after we entered this market. Next will be Europe and the U.S. We are patient.”

“Despite the slowdown, China remains by far the world’s largest smartphone market, accounting for nearly 1 in 3 of all 334.6 million smartphones shipped globally this quarter,” remarked Sui.